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So now it is official. As if we needed any more proof, the banks have withdrawn their court challenge over mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) and have been confirmed again as greedy bankers with their snouts in the trough. Every man and his dog has been bullied, misled and cajoled into buying expensive PPI policies that very rarely pay out.

Now I don’t want to be seen as a founder member of the Banker Appreciation Society, although being able to hold the AGM in a phone box would keep subscription costs down, but I can’t help thinking that there is a large element of jumping on the bandwagon going on here. After all, no-one is accusing the banks of sending the boys around with baseball bats to make people sign their PPI agreements.  I don’t doubt that there was lots of mis-selling going on. In a former job, I had the dubious pleasure of spending an afternoon listening to calls in a major bank’s loans call centre. I would have put the phone down on every call when the Advisors kept hard selling PPI because his/her bonus depended on hitting the required percentage of PPI sales. However, the fact is that I would have put the phone down and not bought the product. Why didn’t more people do the same thing? How many people read their PPI agreement and thought about whether it was suitable for their circumstances? What happened to caveat emptor?

Of course, I had a bit more understanding than most because of working in financial services and there are a lot of people who were more vulnerable to the hard sell tactics being employed. The banks and brokers are rightly being held to account for exploiting this.

I am not pretending to be perfect. I took out an endowment mortgage to buy my first flat because that was just what you did to get a mortgage in the mid-80’s and I liked the idea of getting a nice surplus at the end of the term! But, as with people taking out loans and multiple credit cards and building up credit that they cannot afford to repay, whilst the banks are at fault, surely there should be an element of people taking responsibility for their own actions? 

In many cases, those same customers who are now re-claiming mis-sold PPI will have enjoyed the fruits of taking out a loan at a nice, juicy 5.9 or 6.1% APR in the days of easy credit. How was the bank able to provide loans at such a low rate, only marginally more than their cost of funds? No prizes for guessing that it was because they were subsidising the loan APR by selling the lucrative PPI cover. No-one is now suggesting that the customers who are now getting refunds on their PPI policies should have to pay a more realistic APR for their loans but there is an argument that the current approach is a bit unfair to the banks.

Having made the case for a bit more balance in considering this issue, if you have taken out PPI and think you might have a claim, you would be a fool not to submit it. Who can afford in these hard times to take the moral high ground and not claim their entitlement? The other area where I have no sympathy for the banks and brokers is the way in which they have been rejecting claims without proper investigation. This was the main focus of the banks’ challenge in the courts and this challenge has been rightly rejected. So, if your claim has been rejected by a bank or a broker, you should also look at making another claim.

Here’s how to get help with your claim.

Let me know what you think.

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